#1 - In Sydney, Australia

• The Australian press, when reporting a violent crime case in which aboriginals are the suspects, will refuse to identify the protagonists by their ethnicity. Instead they will make vague references to suspects having “ties with the aboriginal community”, but do so (if at all) only at the very end of an article. [A white youth was recently killed randomly by two young aboriginal men in New South Wales, a crime much reported in the Australian press.]

• Kangaroos are considered such a nuisance in Queensland that farmers will hire hunters for to cull them. Hundreds can be killed in one night. [My friend Alice, with whom I stayed in Sydney, grew up on a farm in Queensland.]

• Kangaroos are best seen at dusk. They don't like being out in the hot sun.
  

• China receive 1000% more foreign investment than India, but its return on investment capital is roughly a third lower. China’s development path of relying on external investment from abroad is has more in common with Latin American countries than either Japan, or South Korea. [Conversation with Mark Thirwell, The Lowy Institute for International Studies, Sydney.]

• In Queenstown New Zealand you can take a Lord of The Rings Tour in which you are taken to 20 locations from the film, are given a full lunch, and are “allowed to handle items used in the film.” What the items actually are – Gandalf’s socks? – is not clear. [Lord of the Rings Tour company website.]

• The new Oasis album, Don’t Believe the Truth, isn’t actually half bad.

• The New York Times, the Wall St Journal and the Washington Post have no Australian Correspondent. [From the early page’s of Bill Bryson’s cliché packed book on Australia]

• Australia’s Prime Minister John Howard is a power walker. He walked 4-5kms a day. Last week he chalked up 20,000 career power walking kilometres. [Report in the Daily Telegraph, an Australian tabloid.]

• In India, electoral participation is positively correlated with poverty. In most advanced democracies, the opposite is true. [From Maximum City, a book I’m reading.]

• Richie Benaud owns a French vineyard. [Joked about in “Boned”, the new CD from the 12^th Man, confirmed by wikipedia]